Since 2021, the Health Fund has broadened its focus on physical activity by recognizing the profound impact our surroundings have on health. This expansion includes addressing the built environment — streets, sidewalks, parks, and other public spaces that shape how we live, move, and connect with one another. Research shows that safe, walkable communities not only encourage sustainable physical activity behaviors but also reduce health disparities, particularly for underserved populations.
A progressing strategy
In 2022 and 2023, our first built environment grants focused mostly on helping communities engage residents and develop local plans to shape the built environments in ways that increase access to nutrition and opportunities for physical activity. For example, the Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation received a $150,000 grant in 2023 to develop a master plan incorporating health consideration based on community feedback.
Similarly, the City of Detroit received $500,000 to create master plans for regional parks, with a focus on enhancing access to greenspaces through active community engagement. Both organizations aim to incorporate their master plans into the City of Detroit’s budget to fund construction of improvements identified in the plans.
Our 2024 grant round marked a significant progression in the Health Fund’s built environment initiative, reinforcing our commitment to community engagement, while broadening to encompass planning and design engineering efforts. The aim was to help funded projects become eligible for construction funding from state sources, such as MDOT’s Transportation Alternatives Program and Safe Routes to School, and DNR’s Recreation Passport Grants program.
Many of our 2024 grantees were smaller communities — including many rural municipalities — which often lack the capacity of larger cities to prepare competitive applications for construction funding. Our research highlighted a pressing need for financial support to fuel planning initiatives, enabling communities to lay a solid foundation for meaningful, long-term improvements in their built environment.
By strengthening the planning and design phases, partners can ensure projects are fully prepared to compete for construction funding, turning community-driven visions into reality.
Priorities for 2025
Building on the successes of our previous grant rounds and lessons learned from ongoing projects, we will continue to prioritize the critical intersections between health, community design, and access to physical activity in 2025. Looking ahead to our upcoming Nutrition & Healthy Lifestyles grant initiative (NHL) — which opens in early March — we’ve identified several key priorities for our built environment investments, including:
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- Supporting the planning, design, and pre-engineering costs associated with pathways, trails, and parks.
- Assisting parks and recreation departments in developing active design principles into community playgrounds.
- Advancing the development of active transportation and recreation plans.
- Implementing robust community engagement strategies to enhance input into walkability or other built environment planning.
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We remain committed to initiatives that address historical inequities, particularly in communities facing significant socioeconomic challenges, high rates of obesity, and limited access to physical activity opportunities. Successful proposals will include robust community engagement and present a clear, actionable strategy for securing construction funding after grant support ends.
Built Environment Assessment and Grantee Technical Assistance
These priorities are being shaped in part by a comprehensive analysis led by our partners at Healthy Places by Design (HPbD), who have worked with the Health Fund team over the past year learn from the field, hone our approach, and develop an exciting new technical assistance (TA) opportunity for built environment grantees, beginning in 2025.
In 2024, we partnered with HPbD to conduct our Michigan Built Environment Assessment, focusing on a key question: How can the Health Fund support Michigan residents in becoming more actively engaged in shaping their communities to promote physical activity and health?
By February 2025, HPbD will deliver a comprehensive report with recommendations on successful built environment initiatives, gaps in community engagement, funding opportunities, and resources for local organizers. (Check out our infographic for more about the learning process.) The findings will help the Health Fund evaluate and refine our efforts and inspire new ideas to enhance community-driven built environment projects across the state.
We’re also partnering with HPbD to deliver TA to our current grantees during the critical phases of planning and design engineering. In March, we’ll launch this new TA initiative during a planned grantee convening in Lansing. The initiative will provide grantees with tools, insights, and connections to help them build stronger projects and partnerships through collaborative leadership and community engagement. It will help them navigate state programs to potentially fund construction of needed improvements, while providing a supportive community of practice to share ideas, exchange knowledge, and foster relationships with peers across the state.
Through a combination of impacts and learning from our grantmaking, the Michigan Built Environment Assessment, and support provided through TA efforts, the Health Fund aims to equip communities to realize their visions for built environments that enhance health and create lasting, sustainable impacts.
What’s Next?
To stay updated on the March release of our upcoming NHL RFP, findings from our Michigan Built Environment Assessment, and news about other Health Fund initiatives, we encourage you to subscribe to our mailing list in the footer below.
And if you’re a prospective applicant considering a new built environment grant proposal or an existing grantee interested in technical assistance, we want to hear from you! Please reach out to Dr. Tayo Moss at [email protected] or (734) 552-9294 to start a conversation.